Conservatism on the Rise in the US and the EU – Are There Lessons for Indonesia?

Biden and Trump going head-to-head again is highly controversial. While Biden clearly does not have the mental and physical health to lead a country, one can clearly doubt whether Trump is fit to be president (again) because he is a controversial character who lacks some of the key diplomatic skills we look for. A leader (not to mention his seemingly tumultuous personal life). One question that pops into one’s head after watching this debate is: Are these two men really the best candidates the Democrats and Republicans can put forward?

Obviously, there have to be many better US presidents than these two, but for some reason skills and qualities are trivial in this race, and one can only speculate about what factors exactly determine their candidacies (which we won’t do here. ) But, at least, both have something to offer. What’s more, they’ve become household names in America, which increases their selectivity.

But what we want to speculate is why we saw this first debate so unusually early (the US presidential election is on 5 November 2024). In previous elections these debates began much closer to the actual election. Two possible factors are (1) Biden and Trump form the clear nominees of both parties starting in early 2024, so no further delay is needed, and (2) the 2024 presidential debates will be the first (since 1988) not to be sponsored by the Commission on Presidential Debates, with both parties setting debate dates themselves. Allows to determine.

But there may be another factor at play. This third factor especially came to mind after watching the reaction (to this first debate) in the American mainstream media. The reader may know that most of the mainstream media channels support Joe Biden. However, after this first debate, many of these channels began criticizing Biden’s performance in the debate and openly doubted whether he would be able to continue in the race. For example, after the first debate, CNN ran an article titled “Biden’s disastrous debate plunges his re-election bid into crisis,” referring to Biden’s frail physical appearance and a couple of moments of incoherent speech. In (other) American media, we also read statements from fellow Democrats who criticized Biden’s performance in the debate.

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